Beowulf cluster
group to search for pulsations from binary pulsars]] A Beowulf cluster is a computer cluster of what are normally identical, commodity-grade computers networked into a small local area network with libraries and programs installed which allow processing to be shared among them. The result is a high-performance parallel computing cluster from inexpensive personal computer hardware. The name Beowulf originally referred to a specific computer built in 1994 by Thomas Sterling and Donald Becker at NASA. Becker, Donald J and Sterling, Thomas and Savarese, Daniel and Dorband, John E and Ranawak, Udaya A and Packer, Charles V, "BEOWULF: A parallel workstation for scientific computation", in Proceedings, International Conference on Parallel Processing vol. 95, (1995). URL http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/brahma/Resources/beowulf/papers/ICPP95/icpp95.html The name "Beowulf" comes from the Old English epic poem Beowulf. See Francis Barton Gummere's 1909 translation, reprinted (for example) in No particular piece of software defines a cluster as a Beowulf. Beowulf clusters normally run a Unix-like operating system, such as BSD, Linux, or Solaris, normally built from free and open source software. Commonly used parallel processing libraries include Message Passing Interface (MPI) and Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM). Both of these permit the programmer to divide a task among a group of networked computers, and collect the results of processing. Examples of MPI software include OpenMPI or MPICH. There are additional MPI implementations available. Beowulf systems operate worldwide, chiefly in support of scientific computing. Development A description of the Beowulf cluster, from the original "how-to", which was published by Jacek Radajewski and Douglas Eadline under the Linux Documentation Project in 1998. Operating systems PCs]] a number of Linux distributions, and at least one BSD, are designed for building Beowulf clusters. These include: * MOSIX, geared toward computationally intensive, IO-low, applications * ClusterKnoppix, based on Knoppix * Kerrighed * Rocks Cluster Distribution * Scyld * DragonFly BSD * Quantian, a live DVD with scientific applications, based on Knoppix and ClusterKnoppix * KestrelHPC * ABC GNU/Linux based on Ubuntu * Kentucky Linux Athlon Testbed * PelicanHPC, based on Debian Live A cluster can be set up by using Knoppix bootable CDs in combination with OpenMosix. The computers will automatically link together, without need for complex configurations, to form a Beowulf cluster using all CPUs and RAM in the cluster. A Beowulf cluster is scalable to a nearly unlimited number of computers, limited only by the overhead of the network. Provisioning of operating systems and other software for a Beowulf Cluster can be automated using software, Open Source Cluster Application Resources (OSCAR) for example. OSCAR installs on top of a standard installation of a supported Linux distribution on a cluster's head node. See also * Aiyara cluster * Alewife (multiprocessor) * Apache Hadoop * Condor High-Throughput Computing System * Coreboot * Fastra II * Grid computing * Kentucky Linux Athlon Testbed * Maui Cluster Scheduler * Open Source Cluster Application Resources (OSCAR) * Platform LSF * Portable Batch System * Simple Linux Utility for Resource Management * Stone Soupercomputer * Sun Grid Engine * TORQUE Resource Manager References Bibliography * Beowulf Cluster Computing With Windows by Thomas Lawrence Sterling 2001 ISBN 0262692759 MIT Press * Beowulf Cluster Computing With Linux by Thomas Lawrence Sterling 2001 ISBN 0262692740 MIT Press External links * The Beowulf Cluster Site * Category:Cluster computing Category:Parallel computing Category:Job scheduling Category:NASA spin-off technologies Category:Unix software